In a series of lectures on classic film-comedys on a german university one is devoted to "Help". Pretty intresting !Most of you will not benefit from it unfortunatly as the talk is given in german, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

So here we go:In the beginning the speaker talks about the "background" of the film, that is the Beatles situation at the time it was realeaed, about the relvance of the Beatles till today und such like and he sums up the plot.He deals with "Hard days night" and how "Help" adds a story while maintaining ADHNs slapstick and the music.Then it's about analysing what makes the movie funny. Basically it' 5 elemts: 1. references (e.g. to James Bond with the pursuit)2. kind of "carnival" with costumes which are used in odd way (e.g. the british man playing an oriental in front of the restaurant), the costumes partly "revealing" their bearers, making them caricatures3. absurdity (e.g. in the house of the beatles), playing with the expectation of the audience4. slapstick, the Beatles being quick at repartee; but also the comic resulting from the fact that the Beatles don't "act", they are among actors and simply stay themselfes, it seems they just happed to blunder into a film production5. a kind of social criticism and the way different conviction and idiologys clash : the religiousness of the Kaili-cult, the establishment (Scotland yard), technik (the scientist) and the pop-cuture presented by the Fab Four

And that's the talks end: that the film in a way presents "pop" as the successful way of live, while simultaneously caricature the high expectation that were attached with it at the time the film was released.

Of course the talk was much more elaborate and sophisticated then I can reproduce here due to my problems expressing such things in English. I hope my summary makes sense.

It is an really interesting dissertation, it's a pitty it's not availible in English !